The enormous development of street and highway traffic results in a steadily growing number of traffic accidents. These accidents bring about great material losses and, more importantly are incommensurable in relation to human losses: loss of life, or permanent invalidism. The safety of traffic on the highways and streets depends to a considerable degree on the fact that a driver will in a definite traffic situation react in a proper way and sufficiently fast. The psychology of street and highway traffic attempts to define these problems. The subject of its investigation is a detailed analysis of the driver's work, in order to establish pscho-physiological functions, indispensable for its safe execution. The driver's work has a specific character. In addition to some acquired information, training and possession of driving competence, the driver is also required to possess a particular psycho-physiological competence, considering the dynamics of the driven vehicle, and the human life and health hazards connected with it.
Among the great number of drivers, travelling on the streets and highways, there are some, who often do not realize that they have certain psycho-physiological deficiencies. This is why a necessity arises for controlliing psycho-physiological characteristics of drivers before their licensing and during their execution of work, as concerns changes or disappearance of psycho-physiological competence.
The proper evaluation of psycho-physiological characteristics of a driver can be made only by using certain arrangements, specialized and adapted for this aim. One of these arrangements, which serve such aims, is my present invention. It can be used for studying the precision of motions connected with the tremor of hands which appears with illnesses of the nervous system, alcoholism, and old age. This device has been already successfully tested in several cases for determining the presence and degree of such afflictions.
With the help of this equipment, one can study the sensitivity of the sense of kinesthesia.
The testing of this psycho-physiological function is very important because the use of the gas, clutch and brake pedals in all sorts of motor vehicles requires an adequate kinesthetic sensitivity and a competence for remembering and properly reproducing the leg pressure strain.